Lover of words

My 2016 Nonfiction November TBR List

Because I love a challenge, while I compete in NaNoWriMo I will also be participating in the Nonfiction November reading challenge. This challenge is being hosted by booktubers ABookOlive and Non Fic Books. This reading challenge is designed to ultimately encourage readers to read more nonfiction books. I do enjoy reading nonfiction and am excited to be taking part.

Participants in this challenge can choose to simply read as many nonfiction books as they can for the month of November or they can take part in themed challenges. I would love to do both, but for now I’m only going to commit 100% to doing the themed challenges. Keep reading to find out what the challenges are and what books I’ll be reading for each challenge.

Challenge Themes

NEW | Read a book that has been recently released or is simply new to you.

For this challenge I will be reading The Full Tank Life: Fuel Your Dreams, Ignite Your Destiny by Ben Tankard. Some of you may recognize Ben from his hit reality show on Bravo, Thicker Than Water. He’s also a Grammy award winning Christian jazz musician and a pastor. I was recently sent this book by FaithWords, an imprint of Hachette Books. This book is all about owning your God-given purpose and stepping into your destiny.

What I’m enjoying about this book already is that it’s easy to read and doesn’t come off as preachy. The tone is conversational and I can definitely hear Ben’s voice in my head as I read. At the end of each chapter there are a list questions that Ben classifies as either “Your DESTINY Diary” or “Discovering Your DESTINY.” This is a short book that can easily be read a couple of hours unless you’re like me and you just want to take your time and really mediate on Ben’s message or fully flesh out your answers for the questionnaires.

FASCINATING | Read a book about a person, topic or written by an author that you find fascinating.

Lisa Sugar is the genius and founder of the POPSUGAR brand. Power Your Happy: Word Hard, Play Nice & Build Your Dream Life is book in which Lisa will share about her journey to building her media company while managing life as a wife and mom. This book is supposed to be filled with tips, advice and words of motivation from her professional and personal life experiences. I had a chance to try out and review the October Must Have Box by POPSUGAR and this was added as a special extra.

As a mom and a wife trying to build my own brands, I’m always fascinated about how other female brand owners/creators worked their way to the top. I can’t wait to pick up some tips and gems from this book. This is another short read that can be read in a day or spaced out to two days.

Important | Read a book about a topic or person that you feel is important to yourself or society in general.

I don’t consider myself a history buff by any means, but I do like reading books that pertain my history as a Black person. I received an ARC of this book on Netgalley and haven’t had a chance to read it until now. The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life & Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici is about Prince Alessandro de’ Medici, who was the heir of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Alessandro came into reign at the age of 19 and ruled until he was assassinated at age 26 in plot arranged by his cousins.

It’s definitely important to me to learn about this piece of Black history because we don’t often hear about or seen mention of Black royalty/rulers outside of Africa and of course President Barack Obama. It’s imperative that more stories like Alessandro be told and researched for the world to read and see. I can’t wait to find out what kind of ruler was and why his cousins had him murdered. The logical answer to that latter question is that they had him killed because he was Black, but I feel like there maybe other factors that contributed to his assassination as well.

Controversial | Read a book that is about a controversial person or topic or has a controversial title.

When it comes to controversial, I feel like sex is one of the most controversial topics besides homosexuality when it comes Christianity. It’s not talked about a lot from a standpoint of how to have it, but more from a standpoint of don’t do it until marriage. I am definitely an advocate for waiting until marriage, but I feel like there needs to be more open dialog and in-depth discussion about the act itself in the Christian community. I will be honest say that a lot of what I learned about sex was more from the clinic/health professional side of it in my Sex Ed class in junior high, from reading Cosmopolitan Magazine and romance novels.

Hot, Holy, and Humorous: Sex in Marriage by God’s Design is a book that will talk about topics that most Christian women have about sex but may have felt uncomfortable asking for more clarity from their church clergy. For example, this book will explore oral sex, how to deal with a husband who isn’t in the mood as frequently as you would like, sexual fantasies and more. I definitely wish a book like this would have been available before I became sexually active as an adult. I’m looking forward to reading what Parker has to say and hope to stumble across many gems that I can tuck up to share with my children when they are older as well as to share with some of my friends when we talk about sex. I’m Christian, but I refuse to be ashamed to talk about and learn about sex and it seems like Parker feels the same and wants to help make sex less of a taboo/controversial topic.

Something Extra

In the event that I knock out all of my Nonfiction November reads before the end of the month, I also want to get Daddy King: An Autobiography by Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. The book falls in both the Important and Fascinating challenge themes for me. We know so much about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, but not a whole about his parents. This book was originally published in 1980, but is being republished in January 2017 by Beacon Press.

I can’t wait to find out more about the man who raised one of our greatest Civil Rights activist and who was also a great Civil Rights activist himself.